Duo processor

[peppermum]

My laptop has intel core 2 duo processor and at the moment everything is saved to the "C" drive, there is still loads of space on that drive, but would it be wise to split things between the C and D drives?. I don't really understand what it's all about, so please don't baffle me with too much technology (I'm a 50+ female who had never touched a computer till a year or so ago)
Peppermum

[MarkRae]

There's no real advantage to splitting (or, in tech-speak, partitioning) your laptop's hard drive.

People sometimes do this so that e.g. Windows is in one partition and your documents etc are in the other. Sometimes hardware vendors create a small partition with diagnostic and system tools so that e.g. the operating system can be reinstalled from scratch if it all goes badly awry.

Again, in your case, there would be no practical advantage to partitioning the hard disk. It certainly wouldn't make the machine go any faster, or anything remotely like that...

[VHG]

Sounds as though you already have a C and a D drive.

Are you sure your D drive is not your CD/DVD drive?

You can check in Windows by opening Computer (or My Computer) and seeing what icons you have for each drive.

If you have loads of space on your C drive then carry on using that.

If your D drive IS on your hard drive (and your CD/DVD drive is maybe E), then when your C drive is maybe 70% full you can start saving stuff on D.

NOTE: Dont let the C drive get full (or even nearly full) as Windows needs space on the C hard drive for it to work properly.

[peppermum]

Thankyou both for the answers, Yes my DVD drive is "E" . at least I now know when to use the "D" drive. am that i'm not doing anything wrong.
Peppermum

[ChuckFickens]

how large are the c and d drives? and what are they called?

It's possible that the D drive is the recovery partition, if that is the case nothing should ever be saved there

if it's a Data partition I'd recommend saving all personal files and documents to the D drive, it makes backups easier and if windows ever dies you can wipe the C drive and reinstall without effecting your personal data.

[peppermum]

The drives are called Acer (C:) 228GB (148gb free) and Data (D:) 227GB with 200gb free. if that helps. Thank you
Peppermum

[fiesata]

Quote
There's no real advantage to splitting (or, in tech-speak, partitioning) your laptop's hard drive.

YES there is !

The data drive D: remains intact if windows has to be reinstalled and there's rarely a need to defragment D:

I have an Acer and the system files are on C: and the data files on D: it save all my data ( which I had backed up anyway) when I had to reload my PC

I split my hard drive on my Medion PC when I installed windows 7 so easy to do these days no third party software needed

[rojash]

As you are new to computers, you probably do the sensible thing and let all programs save their files in the "My Documents" folder (or sub-folders).
If that's the case then you can simply move "My documents" to you D drive.
If you do that, not only will existing documents, pictures etc be moved, but new documents and pictures will automatically be saved there as well.

You can move "My Documents" as follows:
RIGHT-click the "My Documents" icon on the desktop, and choose Properties
Click the Move button
In the window that appears, click the little plus sign to the left of "My Computer"
Click once on your D drive
Click the button at the bottom "Make New Folder"
Call the folder something like PepperMum Docs.
Click OK
You will now see that in the properties window, the Target is "D:\Peppermum Docs
Click OK
When it asks if you wand to move all the documents in the old location to the new location, say Yes (it may take some time)
That's it.

[peppermum]

Thanks Rojash, I have done as you suggested and all is fine.
Cheers,
Peppermum